Abstract:
Mountainous forest-fruit production areas feature complex terrain, heavy reliance on manual labor for fruit transportation, and high transportation costs and loss rates. Agricultural low-altitude facilities and supporting services provide a novel pathway to improve fruit transportation conditions in mountainous regions. Based on the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model by incorporating perceived value and perceived risk, this paper utilizes survey data from 350 mountain citrus growers in Zhejiang Province and adopts a structural equation model to analyze the formation mechanism of farmers’ comprehensive use intention. The results show that: 1) Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions have a significant positive impact on perceived value, whereas perceived risk exerts a significant negative impact, and social influence is insignificant; 2) Perceived value significantly and positively affects comprehensive use intention and plays a mediating role between performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, perceived risk, and use intention, while the indirect effect of social influence is insignificant; 3) Cooperatives and policy support exert a significant direct positive effect on comprehensive use intention and moderate the negative impact of perceived risk on perceived value, whereas their moderating effect on the “perceived value-use intention” path is insignificant; 4) Multi-group analysis reveals no significant inter-group differences in path coefficients and indirect effects across different farm sizes. The findings indicate that farmers' willingness to use low-altitude facilities and supporting services is closely related to their benefit-risk judgments and external support, which can provide references for the differentiated promotion of agricultural low-altitude facilities and the construction of socialized services in mountainous forest-fruit production areas.